


Bigger On the Inside

by joonscribble



Series: His Dark Materials AU [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Alternate Universe - His Dark Materials, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Pre-Captain America: The First Avenger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-27
Updated: 2014-06-27
Packaged: 2018-02-06 10:29:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1854748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joonscribble/pseuds/joonscribble
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve's daemon never needed to change even after the serum. Which is good because many other things did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bigger On the Inside

**Author's Note:**

> Ishild ('Issie') was created by the lovely awanderingbard who generously let me use her headcanon for this fic. She also is the creator of Altan and Demira. 
> 
> Visual aid for the daemons:  
> Ishild (a Roosevelt terrier): http://s14.postimg.org/vg3b0vh4h/teddy_roosevelt_terrier.jpg
> 
> Shessida (a black bear originally): http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1190583/thumbs/o-BLACK-BEAR-facebook.jpg  
> Later as a sun bear: http://lumq.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/sun_bear_2.jpg
> 
> Altan (a rainbow boa): http://cages.smugmug.com/Other/Peru-Amazon-2013/i-PZVzPcm/1/L/Epicrates%20cenchria%20Rainbow%20Boa-2-L.jpg
> 
> Demira (a tailorbird): http://nagpurbirds.org/files/pictures/IMG_2588.JPG

_Brooklyn – 1935_  
  
Issie braces herself to go flying into the brick wall because that’s usually how these things go. But the last strike never comes and instead Issie’s vision is filled up with familiar black fur. Powerful jaws gently clasp the nape of her neck, lifting her clear off the ground, much to her chagrin. Issie knows she should be grateful. And she is, really. But that doesn’t mean she isn’t indignant about Shess having to save her _again_.  
  
“Put me down!” Issie squirms.  
  
When Shess deposits her further down the alley, she does her best to move around Shess’ considerable bulk but the bear is firm about being a barrier between her and Jerry’s dog daemon who growls a bit at them before cowering under Shess’ stare.  
  
“Shess, come on!” protests Issie.  
  
“Are you ever going to learn to stay down?” demands Shess.  
  
“Never,” she answers, resolutely. She scrambles to try and climb over Shess at this point but can’t even make it halfway up her flank. Shess huffs and barely has to try to push Issie back.  
  
Meanwhile, Bucky’s taken down Jerry with one punch.  
  
Once Jerry’s off and running with his daemon, Shess moves to the side to allow Issie to get past. Not that it matters now. But Issie still rushes over to Steve, consolingly pushing her face against his ankles once Bucky’s helped him out of the piles of cans and day old vegetable peels he’d been pushed into.  
  
“The hell was that about?” asks Bucky.  
  
Steve makes an effort to straighten his clothes that are now half torn and spotted with blood from his nose. “He was mouthing off to Mrs. Neil,” he mumbles.  
  
“And you decided to mouth off to him,” Bucky guesses. He shakes his head. “It’s a good thing you’re not a gambling man. You always pick lousy odds.” Shess lumbers next to Issie, nudging her. “If Jerry’s fine with insulting old ladies, he’s not going to think twice about breaking your face.”  
  
“So?” Steve asks, still stinging a bit from the rescue. “If you don’t like the odds, you don’t have to get involved.”  
  
Shess puts a paw on Issie, pulling her closer. If she wanted, Issie knows she can wriggle out from underneath the limb that’s about as big as her entire body. But instead she lets the warm weight remain, even as she growls a little on principle.  
  
Bucky grins. “Nah, you make me look good. If I wasn’t saving your ass every day, people would think I’m a jerk.”  
  
“You are a jerk,” replies Steve but there’s no heat behind his words. He looks up at Bucky and smiles. “Thanks, anyway.”  
  
Bucky throws an arm around Steve, manhandling him a little in an echo of how Shess does the same to Issie. “Come on. You need to get cleaned up before your mom sees you.”

* * *

  
  
 _Europe – 1943_  
  
The walk back is long and exhausting. Or rather it should be and probably is for everyone else. But Issie is brimming with energy, feeling proud of what they’ve accomplished, the men they’ve helped rescue, and most importantly that Shess and Bucky are among the living. Ahead of her she can see Steve and Bucky talking, their tones taking on that familiar rhythm. It doesn’t matter Steve’s now the size of a house and he actually has to take some care when bumping his shoulder against Bucky’s to not send the other man careening off to the side.  
  
But beside her, Shess keeps giving her side glances, quickly averting her gaze when Issie catches her.  
  
“Hey,” Issie questions. “What’s wrong?”  
  
“Nothing,” Shess answers. “So you’re bigger now, huh?” she adds.  
  
“Not as much as Steve,” Issie points out quickly. “He’s four times his size now. I just got maybe an inch or two.” Shess doesn’t reply to that but focuses her gaze on Steve who is still ahead of them, looking like he could probably sprint all the way to England and back without breaking a sweat. Bucky is making some crack about hearing Steve’s punched Adolph Hitler over 200 times. It doesn’t seem right that they remain as they are but Shess is almost awkward around her. “Hey,” Issie says. “You can still pick me up, if you wanted.”  
  
The minute the words leave her, Issie knows it was the wrong way to say it. She meant she and Steve weren’t any different, not where it counted; that she and Shess weren’t any different. Shess gives her a look that’s fond but a little angry. “Nah,” she drawls. “You hated me doing that kind of stuff.” Before Issie can respond, Shess is bounding ahead of her, coming up on Bucky’s right who absently tugs at her ear while still joking with Steve about his short-lived career as a chorus girl.  
  
Later, when she and Steve are not slapped with a disciplinary charge, they sit with the other men in a makeshift mess hall. Shess is curled up by Bucky’s feet while he all but inhales something that looks like oatmeal and probably tastes like cardboard. Steve’s telling him about his plans for what’s next, about the team he’s putting together. Issie noses at one of Shess’ paws.  
  
“Cut it out,” Shess complains, swiping half-heartedly.  
  
“Quit hogging all the stupid,” insists Issie. “Nothing’s changed.” Shess gives her a look. “Nothing important. We’re still us.” She pushes at Shess’ paws again until the bear drapes one over Issie to get her to stop. Issie knows she can get free, just like old times but she happily settles down. She can practically feel Shess rolling her eyes. “You’re coming with us, right?” Issie asks.  
  
Shess huffs but tightens her hold a little.

* * *

  
  
 _Europe – 1944_  
  
They’re huddled together in the burnt down bar. While Steve drinks to get drunk, a gesture as useless as when he’d tried to grab Bucky’s hand, Issie sits on his lap, tucked under one arm.  
  
“We should never have asked them to come,” says Steve, tearfully. “They could’ve gone home.”  
  
Issie whines a little, pressing closer. After the serum and rescuing the 107th she had been so happy to finally be able to do some real good; to be able to serve side by side with Shess rather than be helpless. But it turned out nothing had changed. Shess and Bucky were gone because she and Steve still couldn’t finish the fights they’d started.  
  
 “We didn’t win the one fight we had to,” Issie whispers.  
  
Later, much later, Issie resolutely keeps her gaze on the ice that’s rushing up to meet them. It was over but at least this fight, the final fight, they would win.

 

* * *

 

 _Washington DC – 2013_  
  
“Do you think it’s such a great idea?” asks Issie. She and Steve are lingering outside of the Smithsonian. Or rather, Steve is lingering only because as they approached the steps, Issie had tugged at his ankles. “We always get sad afterward,” she points out.  
  
Steve shrugs, his face mostly shadowed by the baseball cap he always wears when they go. “We’re sad anyway.” It’s true but Issie is still skeptical about this being a good thing for them.  
  
The exhibit at the Smithsonian is pretty comprehensive. Whoever put it together had done their research, had dug up archival footage that were never before seen until now. Still, all Issie can notice is all that’s not in the exhibit. The information is broad but not that detailed. As she follows Steve along, listening to the automated guide telling them about all the feats the Howling Commandos accomplished and a brief biography of each member, she can’t help but want to add that Dum Dum had a surprisingly good singing voice and Morita had a sister he wrote to all the time when they had been overseas.  
  
There are no photos of herself and Steve before Erskine’s serum. Why would there be? No one thought they were worth anything when Steve had been little. No one but a small number of people Steve could count on one hand. They were all gone now or just as good as gone.  
  
They linger by the display set up for Bucky and Shess specifically. Issie sees herself in the footage that’s being played on loop. She’s listening intently to whatever Shess is saying to her while Steve and Bucky laugh at something someone has said off screen. She doesn’t remember when this was but she sees the way her ears are twitching and the tilt of her head and knows she must have been happy, her feelings reflected in Steve’s grin on film.  
  
Issie paws at Steve’s foot to get his attention. “I think the next time we see Kate and Sacha, you should invite them over for coffee,” she suggests.  
  
Steve gives her a small smile. “Altan been working on you too?” he asks.  
  
“He and Natasha have a point.”  
  
“Maybe.” He doesn’t elaborate and moves toward the small theater where an old interview with Peggy and Takeo is being shown.  
  
Issie follows him, frustration tingling through her. Before waking up in the future, before the crash, before the train, Steve always listened to her. Now there is this hesitation whenever they talk about something that isn’t related to a mission for Shield. She wonders if Steve doesn’t trust her anymore, if he blames her in some way for pushing him to ask Bucky and Shess to come with them rather than be discharged home. The thought makes Issie angry because it hadn’t just been her. Steve had wanted them along too. It hadn’t been just her fault.

* * *

  
 _Washington DC – 2014_  
  
Plaster and dust rain down on Issie as she rushes to keep up with Steve as he slams through door after door. She looks up as they race through the darkened office. Through the windows she can see a glint of metal and a figure running on the rooftop of the building adjacent to them. When Steve crashes through the window, Issie follows him, sailing through the air. As Issie lands neatly on the next rooftop, she can see the assassin still running, a black panther sprinting next to him. When Steve hurls the shield at them with his entire strength, the assassin turns and catches the spinning shield like it’s nothing more than a softly lobbed baseball with what looks like a metal arm.  
  
The black panther is now suddenly a goshawk.  
  
The sight of the daemon shifting makes Issie freeze; the wrongness of it paralyzing her while the assassin stares at them for only a moment before throwing the shield back at them. Steve barely catches it, the force of the throw pushing him back several inches. Issie watches as the assassin and his altered daemon simply jump off the rooftop, disappearing.

* * *

  
  
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Issie tells Altan later at the hospital. “His daemon changed…like a kid’s,” Issie shudders. Steve is telling Natasha more or less the same while also giving a physical description.  
  
Altan flicks his tongue, troubled. “We’ve seen something like that. Once.”

* * *

  
  
“Bucky?”  
  
“Who the hell is Bucky?”  
  
Issie stares at the familiar face, the one that’s identical to Shess’ Bucky. If it’s somehow him then it has to be that the tiger staring at her is Shess. The tiger daemon crouches, but doesn’t advance again, her large head tilted. And then suddenly Issie knows. It’s Shess. It’s her. Somehow in this new form, it’s Shess.  
  
She barely realizes this before there’s more gunfire and Bucky and Shess are retreating, vanishing in a cloud of smoke from the missile that’s been fired at them.  
  
“Shess!” Issie cries. She launches herself to go chasing after her but only gets a few feet before there’s a sharp tug somewhere in her chest. She can’t keep going because Steve isn’t moving. He’s just standing there staring, white with shock. Issie wants to demand what he’s doing. Why isn’t he running after them? She growls, trying to push herself forward, to somehow force Steve to move with her so that they don’t lose Shess and Bucky again. But it’s too late. They’re already gone. They were too slow again.

* * *

  
  
 _Washington DC – 2015_  
  
Shess doesn’t say it, but Issie knows she thinks her being unsettled bothers Issie. And it does but not for the reasons Shess thinks. Issie hates what it must have taken for Shess to go back to shifting, hates that even as Bucky is able to hold some semblance of a normal conversation these days with Steve, Shess still hides from her, ashamed and wary.  
  
Somehow during their time as the Winter Soldier, Shess and Bucky had learned how to be apart from one another at a disturbingly long distance. When Steve coaxes Bucky to sit and either talk or eat with him, Shess often changes to her goshawk form and flies off to another room while Bucky sits next to Steve. It isn’t a complete separation but it’s far enough that Issie can’t go after her.  
  
It isn’t fair.

* * *

  
  
It had been nearly six months since she and Steve had found them again. And during that time Shess has shifted into many different animals, but never back to her original form. Not once. Until now.  
  
Despite being provided a bed in her and Steve’s spare room, Bucky and Shess still tend to sleep on the floor with just a blanket. Steve wants to check on them because whatever conversation he had with Bucky earlier has him concerned. When they look inside the darkened room, Bucky is on the ground sleeping, his head pillowed against Shess’ bulky form.  
  
She’s a black bear again.  
  
The sight of her, curled up in sleep next to Bucky is so familiar that Issie whines, wanting to bound up to her and push herself against the soft black fur. The noise she makes is enough to wake them up and Shess opens her eyes first and sees them. Suddenly she’s a tiger, flipping onto her paws and roaring at Issie in rage. Issie yelps, backing up as Shess looks ready to leap at her.  
  
Bucky grabs Shess by the nape of her neck with his real hand and pulls at her, once. “Stop,” he says, sharply. Bucky and Shess almost never talk to each other, but when they do, it’s usually Bucky ordering Shess and her complying. The command breaks Shess out of whatever fit of anger she’s in. She stares at Issie, shame gleaming in her eyes before she melts into a snake and slithers under the bed to hide.  
  
Desperate to not let this stand as it is, Issie glances up at Steve who thankfully isn’t exiting the room. He’s flipping on the lights and apologizing for waking them up. Issie takes the opportunity to zip under the bed.  
  
“Sorry,” Shess whispers when Issie approaches her. “I’m sorry.” Shess is coiled up so her head is turned away.  
  
“It’s not your fault,” Issie reassures her, wondering if it would okay to walk around so that they can look at each other. “I shouldn’t have startled you. You were sleeping.”  
  
There’s a pause before Shess says quietly, “I think I was dreaming.”  
  
“Yeah? Was it a good dream? You looked peaceful.” _You looked like before,_ Issie thinks.  
  
“I don’t remember,” says Shess. “It was warm, though.” She doesn’t go on and Issie carefully walks over so that she can see Shess’ face. “I’m sorry,” Shess says again.  
  
“What are you sorry for? I’m the one who woke you up.”  
  
“I know you wanted me to stay like that. The way I was when I was sleeping.”  
  
Issie looks at her, thinking it’s strange that she’s looking down at Shess when all their lives Shess had been the larger of the two. But Issie thinks it’s strange and mostly wonderful that she can see Shess at all.  
  
It seemed back then during the early days of their reunion that Shess and Bucky were almost the reverse of what had happened to her and Steve. While Steve’s body had changed dramatically, Issie had barely changed at all. Bucky still looks like Bucky more or less but Shess is now so physically different all the time. Back then it had worried Issie that her friend had been altered forever.  
  
But now huddled under the bed, looking at Shess, Issie realizes it doesn’t matter. Shess might look different but Issie could still recognize her, no matter what her form.  
  
“I don’t care what you look like,” Issie replies. She lies down on her stomach, still facing Shess. “I just want you to be okay.”  
  
Shess doesn’t say anything but she doesn’t run away either.

* * *

  
  
 _New York – 2015 (a little later)_  
  
“Shess?” Issie calls up.  
  
Issie silently curses Tony Stark’s bizarre decision to put in shelving units so high they practically hit the ceiling. What possible use were they to anyone that high up?  
  
“Shess, you’re gonna miss the movie.”  
  
Steve and Bucky are on the couch as Steve cues up the DVD. It’s the Wizard of Oz which they’d already seen together back in the 40s but it would be a novelty to view it again on Stark’s huge flatscreen.  
  
Stark had made a comment about maybe they should try to make some headway on the growing list of more contemporary movies Steve’s been putting in his recommendations book. But Steve had wanted to stick with something classic, especially after Bucky had recalled seeing the movie the first time with Steve back in the day.  
  
“Hashtag Throwback Thursday,” Demira had nodded, approvingly.  
  
Issie still isn’t sure what Tony's daemon had meant exactly.  
  
“Shess, come on,” Issie tries again. Issie can’t see her but she’s pretty sure Shess is two shelves down from the top. That’s about the distance she can go these days from Bucky. The distance is not as far as it used to be which is good but there are still days like today when Shess tests it, choosing to hide away as far as she can. “Fine, if you won’t come down, I’ll have to come up.” Issie pulls herself up onto her hind legs, using her paws to balance on a shelf before leaping onto it. She looks up and around to see what would be the best angle to get to the next level when Shess finally pokes her head out.  
  
“You can’t climb that,” Shess says. “You’ll slip and fall.”  
  
“No, I can do it,” Issie insists.  
  
“No, you can’t.”  
  
“Guess we’ll find out.” She scrambles and barely makes it to the next shelf, kicking rapidly to regain her balance.  
  
Above her, she can hear Shess grunt, “Are you ever going to learn to stay down?”  
  
Issie smiles to herself. “Never,” she replies.  
  
Shess huffs, hooking one paw on the shelf below her to get a firm grip. “Fine, I’m coming down, just stay there.” With more grace than Issie had been exhibiting, Shess makes her way, taking some care not to leave scratches in the wood.  
  
Shess is a bear again and has been for months now. She’s smaller than she used to be and her fur isn’t as thick. She has a yellow splotch on her chest that wasn’t there before. But she’s settled again and seeing her so makes Issie happy. She bounds around Shess as they make their way to the couch where Steve and Bucky are watching Dorothy examining Toto for any injuries he might have sustained from Miss Gulch. Shess settles down by Bucky’s feet, placing her head on her outstretched paws. Bucky glances at her, looking a little surprised that Shess has joined them. He waits a second before reaching out to stroke her head. Shess shifts a little at the touch, settling in a bit more.  
  
Issie sees Steve smiling at them and wriggles down to press herself along Shess’ side. After awhile, she can feel Shess drape a paw over her. The weight’s a little different but still familiar. Some things never change.  
  
THE END

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own a single character who appears or is even mentioned in this apart from Shessida ('Shess').


End file.
